Aargh! My daughter has mono....

frazzledspice · #1 09-28-2007, 02:35 AM

Just six weeks into her first semester at college.

Luckily, she decided to spend her first two years at a local college, so I'll be around with the chicken soup.....

She's been going into a slow decline over the past week and a half. Yesterday she said when she tried to get up her legs would feel like lead. Her voice teacher looked at her throat Tuesday and postponed her lesson till tomorrow.

Does anyone have any experience with mono? Our family practice doctor is on maternity leave so we went to the urgent care center. The urgent care doctor said, "If you have a fever, you have to stay home from school and work. If you don't, you can go. But you need LOTS OF REST and fluids..."

So we are confused. She fell asleep as soon as she got home at about 2 p.m. but we don't know if it's better for her to take off a week or so, getting assignments and resting, or to struggle through each day and collapse when she gets home. She did call into work and get tomorrow night off, but she's scheduled to work about 6 hours Saturday and 5 hours Sunday....

I wish the doctor had been less ambiguous...what is the best way for her to "get well soon?"

And, of course, to maintain the grades she needs to keep her scholarship.

(Other than that she's been doing well and feeling well...)

**conradd** · #2 09-28-2007, 04:55 AM

When I had it, I slept 22 hours a day for a month. I hope your daughter's case is much lighter than mine. If she can work with her teachers to get assignments and complete them at home, it would be good - what classes is she taking?

*emeleel* · #3 09-28-2007, 07:50 AM

I had a light case about her age. The only real symptom I had was an incredibly dry and sore throat. I was better in about 3 days after they caught it and I got to stay home, sleeping and drinking fluids.

However, in high school, two friends caught it (it really was the kissing disease for them, LOL!) and they were out of school for about a month like Deb describes. Even after they got back they were still on extra fluids and had to be allowed to carry juice to classes.

If she's feeling that bad already, I'd say she needs to stay off of any activity as much as possible without flunking. And NO voice lessons! (I kid you not, I was going through a bag a day of those Hall's Plus cough drops with the embedded cough syrup...

)

**lynnzop**[$] · #4 09-28-2007, 10:33 AM

Everyone I've known that has had it has been totally wiped out for at least a month. Sleep, rest, and more of the same.

From what you've said over the years, I think she's a pretty driven person...you need to help her understand that there can be complications if she doesn't allow herself to heal. That might even mean taking time off school.

frazzledspice · #5 09-28-2007, 10:49 AM

Well, she's a voice major. She has 17 credits, all music except for Freshman Composition and History. Three singing courses--Vocal Jazz, Mixed Chorus, and Opera Workshop.

She had only been working about 11 hours a week, but one of the ladies is out because her granddaughter has been born with a serious heart problem, and she was going to take her 8 hours, too.

In the past week and a half, almost two weeks, she seemed to have the most trouble in the morning, and would perk up a little as the day wore on. Once she threw up in school. She had fallen asleep in three classes. Yesterday when I went to get her she had fallen asleep in two classes and someone had felt her head and said she had a fever. She's been complaining about the temperature in the Fine Arts Building, and has been getting some chills (but she said everyone complained about that.) She even carried a little blanket in her backpack.

Her advisor said that she'd had mono in school and had to be hospitalized (but someone else told me that, too--was that more common years ago?)

Oh, she had kind of decided to drop her Freshman Comp class and CLEP out of it, anyway. She had never taken AP English in HS (being ADD, she only seems to be driven by what she loves) but had very good ACT scores, especially in English.

At this point, I think the CLEP test is the best idea--it will take a little pressure off her.

**hadassahchana**[$] · #6 09-28-2007, 11:00 AM

She needs to talk to a doctor - does your family doc have someone covering her practice? When I had mono in university I tried to keep up with everything, and I am embarrassed to admit this, but I flunked a course. I was just exhausted, I had to quit my job and I tried to keep up with all my coursework but I just couldn't stay awake long enough to finish reading. It hurt too much to practice (I was a music major, too) and I should have gotten incompletes for that term but I thought I could just force my way through it. It didn't work out that way for me, and I lost most of my summer, too. My family doctor told me that if I'd just allowed myself to rest and heal during the previous term, I would have been better in a month or so, but pushing myself too hard made the illness last longer.

Poor little one, I hope she feels better soon, and I hope you can persuade her to learn to listen to her body. That can be a really important lesson for any performer to learn. Hugs to you, too, Frazz.

phoenixx · #7 09-28-2007, 11:06 AM

She needs to take time off, and to absolutely not sing until she is better. My sisters have all had mono, some more than once, and it generally takes 2 weeks to a month to FEEL fully healed, followed by extra fluids and rest for another few weeks as the fatigue wears off and on.

**lynnzop**[$] · #8 09-28-2007, 11:19 AM

Wait a second...has she actually been TESTED for mono? Don't they do a blood test or something?

If not, get her in to a sub doc (not urgent care) who can actually diagnose her and give her a recommended course of treatment. It might not be mono. Those symptoms are pretty ambiguous and could be West Nile or Lyme disease, FCOL.

frazzledspice · #9 09-28-2007, 12:02 PM

Yes, she was tested for mono.

To tell the truth, she'd had a tick bite and developed a circular rash around it a month ago. She took antibiotics for a week. (They didn't do a tick screen, just treated it to be "conservative.")

When we brought her to the doctor, we actually thought it was some type of tick-borne illness (Lyme disease is apparently very rare here, but Rocky Mountain spotted fever is more common.) This time they did do a tick screen (which takes time to be read,) a thyroid test, and bloodwork.

Doctor came back, and said her white count was very high, indicating a virus, which probably meant it wasn't a tick borne-illness. I said, "Do you think it could be mono?" She said she would ask the lab to do a mono screen, too, and when she came back she said, "Yes, it is mono."

So if the tick-borne illness wasn't cured by the first round of antibiotics (doxycycline) then she has a tick-borne illness in addition to mono

Just in case the tick screen comes back positive, she is retaking the round of doxycycline.

Well, I just spoke to the family doctor's nurse (family doctor had her baby last night.)

She said, "the disease is self-limiting. She should do what she feels able to, and if she can't, her body will tell her."

She also said she had a fact sheet, which she is faxing to us.

**hadassahchana**[$] · #10 10-02-2007, 09:29 PM

Frazz, how is she feeling today?

frazzledspice · #11 10-03-2007, 03:18 AM

She slept for five days straight, missing school, work, and everything else. Last night she got cabin fever and perked up. We went out for a little while.

This morning she tried to go to school and felt nauseous right before leaving and changed her mind. But she felt better by the afternoon and seems ready to go to school tomorrow.

Other than complete and total exhaustion, she had some abdominal pains, a little nausea, some headaches, etc. mostly in the middle of the night.

But we are grateful it seems to be wearing off.

(You know, my brother has MS, and when it was diagnosed at age 35, they found a 20 year old MS lesion on the part of his brain controlling seizure activity....well, he had had "mono" in college, and had developed a seizure disorder right after that....I know that years ago MS was sometimes misdiagnosed at first as mono. I don't know if they had the mono patch spot test then--that's what my daughter had to diagnose mono.

Nevertheless, remembering my brother's 'mono' and how it had been rediagnosed as MS twenty years later, I've been watching her like a hawk.

I still don't know with my brother whether a depressed immune system allowed MS to creep in--but MS is auto-immune--or what.

I have had many friends with MS, too. MS is the illness I go on walkathons for...)

**lynnzop**[$] · #12 10-03-2007, 10:43 AM

Glad to hear she is perking up, Frazz. Make sure she continues to get tons of rest.

**Prepoia**[$] · #13 10-03-2007, 01:03 PM

And don't forget to mention the MS history to her doctor.

**Helen_B**[$] · #14 10-27-2007, 01:36 AM

How's your daughter doing now, Frazz? I hope she's feeling better.

frazzledspice · #15 10-27-2007, 03:43 AM

Thanks so much for caring, Helen.

She still feels more tired than normal, but she's been back in school for three weeks, even though she's missed a day or two here and there....

When she first got back, her tick screen came back and showed borderline Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. They took another screen and the results were unchanged, so obviously when she had the tick bite with rash in September she had also started developing Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. The antibiotics took care of it, but there are still a few residual antibodies.

On the other hand, her boyfriend broke up with her Wednesday night, and she's been up and down....Mostly down. Her friends are helping, and one of the older students in her college choir works in the Counseling Department, said a lot of really helpful things to her, and offered her ten free counseling sessions...

This boyfriend was such a fixer-upper, and I was so glad to see him go....she tends to pick people based on physical attraction. She had first been attracted to him when we got her a laptop for HS graduation (he worked in Best Buy in the Geek Squad.) When she met him two months later she fell for him right away, but he was a mess! In debt up to his eyeballs, unpaid tickets, had dropped out of college, and told her he had never had a relationship that lasted more than two months.....true to form, he broke up with her on their two month anniversary.

I keep waiting for her to have that lightbulb go off that would tell her "physical attraction isn't everything...."

I'm hoping she'll learn from this experience....

But thanks for asking

**hadassahchana**[$] · #16 10-27-2007, 12:04 PM

Frazz, she really is having a rough spot, isn't she? Poor thing, and poor mom. There are days when I think it is almost harder on us when we watch them learn from mistakes. I hope she's better soon.

frazzledspice · #17 10-27-2007, 04:22 PM

Thanks, Cindy!

You are lucky to have "four horsemen." My boys, God bless them (29 & 32, ) were so low maintenance. I didn't appreciate how low maintenance they were as teens until their sister became a teen, years and years later, but I do now!

And I tell them all the time

She's at work now, with her fabrics and sewing, planning projects in her head during the slow times, I'm sure....

But the first 24 hours after the breakup were really hard on her and me. She was too upset to go to school, and so she didn't have her support system in place. She had a friend stay over Thursday night, was at someone's birthday party Friday night, and is going to another party tonight.

Her biggest support has come from one of her gay friends (and a fellow singer....) Thank you, _______.

**Helen_B**[$] · #18 10-27-2007, 07:46 PM

Sorry to hear about the boyfriend. Your daughter must feel just terrible.
Boys aren't always so low maintenance, either. When Jeremy was recovering very slowly from mono, part of the problem was that he had recently become engaged to a young woman in Ohio, and when he got so sick and was no longer the perfect trophy fiance to be displayed on schedule to the relatives along with the ring, she dumped him. He was a long time bouncing back.
I have not ceased to be astonished at the number of predatory females who are ready to pick off the nice guys who trust everybody.